The Golden Rule of Building a Thriving Blog: Tanja from Our Next Life

Nevermind the fact that she was 100% anonymous for years, or that she’s only just begun to monetize her blog. Doesn’t matter.

She’s built up an incredibly tight-knit and loyal community of followers and proven herself as a top-tier writer (and podcaster!)

How?

She follows a simple framework of helping people with authentic, honest, and transparent content, and has put for the work necessary to build valuable (but really just organic and “human”) relationships.

She has a TON of wisdom to add (and she’s also really good in audio format…hence The Fairer Cents Podcast)

We chat about:

What needs to be talked about in the blogosphere? What aren’t we talking about (this is good)

Sexism in the workplace, and in blogging

PRO TIPS for being an anonymous blogger

How long-term relationships are possibly the biggest blogging “hack” or “secret.”

Enjoy, and see below for how to get a FREE DYEB Tee 🙂

Want a free Do You Even Blog t-shirt?

Check this out:

woot! I can have 50 reviews?

I’m straight-up selfish. I want to get to 50 reviews! But I’m willing to barter for them 😉

What topic gets you fired up? Comment below and share, and I’ll giveaway a DYEB Tee to a random commenter!

Reader Interactions

Comments

Hm…what gets me fired up. I would say it’s the social culture with women in the workplace. There is no reason for a glass ceiling these days, women shouldn’t be expected to do it all, and men can have a place at home too 🙂

Hot damn, totally agree about the popups and/or ads. If you do it too, then you’re part of the problem. I hate popups, but don’t mind ads. I just look past them anyway. 🙂

What gets me fired up? I suppose when people claim that they are “experts” because they’ve personally accomplished something. That accomplishment is great, no doubt about it. But respectfully, that doesn’t make any of us experts. I retired at 35, and I certainly wouldn’t claim to be a personal finance expert.

I just wanted it bad enough…you don’t need to be an expert to want it!

I really enjoyed this episode! Tanja has done such a good job creating incredible content, a thriving community and a reason to come back to her site over and over again. For me, the discussion around putting your audience first and avoiding a “perfect SEO but boring blog” pitfall had me fired up. Our site is not great at SEO and doesn’t have amazing content, but when I see readers/commenters come back, I know I’m on the right track.

I have to agree with you and Tanja on the power of Twitter. I started my blog and decided to focus on Pinterest because that’s where many bloggers have seen amazing growth. But there’s really no interaction on Pinterest so I started spending more time on Twitter and I’m starting to see the benefits already. I only have a small following but just sharing other blogger’s content and commenting on them has been a good way to connect. I still have a long way to go but I think it will be worth it in the end.

I love th conversation about men vs women in the highest ranks of corporate America.

I’m cautiously optimistic this changes in another generation, the American business culture has slowly migrated away from trust being formed on the golf course or in the exclusive clubs. Time will tell, but that’s my observation working at a fairly high level of a male dominated industry.

As far as being outed to my readers, it was an Excel spreadsheet that had my name buried deep in the properties on a page I had never seen or thought to look for. I fixed that, but it’s tough to stay anonymous forever, especially if you want to meet your readers and other bloggers / podcasters like you guys and gals. I’ve goofed in several other ways, too.

Regarding authenticity, I don’t think about SEO until I’ve written what I want to say. The SEO part comes after the fact when I add the keywords, snippet, etc… I suppose I do think about it a tiny bit when writing, trying to add a heading every 300 words or so if it makes sense, just to keep Yoast happy.

I also try to be honest about the ads and resulting income. When I talk about withdrawal rates and multiples of annual expenses, I refer to using them at a time when I no longer have an income, which won’t be when I retire from medicine, and may be never, depending on what the future holds, which, like Tanja, I won’t pretend to know. Wow, that was a lot of commas!

Fun side note — I met Elizabeth O’Brien at Time Inc. the other day in The Big City. I had read her story outing ONL but didn’t realize she was the author until she started talking about you guys. She has also written about physicians who have retired early, and I’ve been sharing some of those stories on social media.